DIGGERS' QUEEN: Min Blaxland dresses up for a fancy costume fund-raiser to raise funds for the New England Soldiers' Club.

IT'S a hot evening in February, 1916, and residents are pouring into Armidale Town Hall to decide whether the school of arts building should be turned into a soldiers' club.

Mayor William Curtis, a draper by trade, presides over the meeting.

Min Blaxland, great granddaughter of the explorer Gregory Blaxland and known as “The Digger's Queen”, sits beside him.

She reads out the proposal for a New England Soldiers' Club.

It will be a place for all members of the Australian Imperial Expeditionary Forces, camped at Armidale Showground.

“The club shall provide members with rest, recreation and material comfort,” Min tells the gathered assembly.

“It will be open between 5pm and 10.30pm on weekdays”, there will be no alcohol served and gambling will be prohibited.

Similar meetings are being held in town halls across Australia throughout The Great War.

People on the home front are keen to do their bit for “our boys” fighting for The Empire.

Makeshift camps are set up on the outskirts of many other country towns, where men who have enlisted train and wait to be called to serve their country.

At the meeting in Armidale, the mayor rises and takes a vote on the club; the motion passes overwhelmingly.

Copious notes are taken at committees and sub-committees over the next few months, documenting rules and regulations for the club and fund-raising drives.

Mrs T Lambert from the Armidale Relief Society commits to baking three cakes and selling them at 10d each, or about $4.15 in today's currency; a plum pudding (1/5), two tins of fruit at a halfpenny each and one pudding at 1/5.

Notes show Mrs' Horton, Vane and Holden pledging to do their bit in the kitchen, even cooking herrings in sauce.

Their recipes, reports and expenses are meticulously recorded in diaries and notebooks catalogued at The University of New England's Heritage Centre.

They provide a window on to the everyday life of those left behind during World War I.

"While much has been documented from those serving during The Great War, comparatively less has been written about the everyday lives of those left in Australia," archivist Bill Oates says.

Min's diary, usually jotted with a pencil in modified cursive style, forms part of that collection.

It sits alongside newspapers and articles in the archives detailing the everyday lives of Australians during the war years.

Billy Hughes is prime minister. He's juggling the high cost of war (20 per cent of GDP in 1918, compared with 2 per cent in 2016) and a relentless drought which began in 1911 and has caused a crash in wool, meat and dairy production.

In country towns, people such as Min are trying to make ends meet on an average wage of £2 9s 3d for men ($285.45 in today's currency) and 19s 5d ($113.94) for women.

Life's tough for those left at home.

As with thousands of other women living in rural communities, Min's morning starts with her regular visit to Armidale Hospital, armed with bunches of fresh flowers picked from her garden.

“It's hard to believe now but picking flowers for recovering soldiers in war-time hospitals was a daily routine for thousands of women,” Oates says.

She's also preparing for the night's meal and will probably turn to a recipe from Mrs Beeton's All About Cookery book.

There's a special section on Australian cookery, with recipes such as Melbourne pancakes, parrot pie, Rosella jelly and jugged wallaby.

William Curtis, meanwhile, is trying to recruit young men to serve in his burgeoning store. It's a very difficult task, since a third of Australia's male population aged between 18 and 44 have enlisted to serve the country.